Christian likens session to Clint Eastwood movie
'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'
By JIMMY GALVAN Managing Editor

With the 80th Legislature in the history books, District 9 Wayne Christian compares the session to a Clint Eastwood movie.

"It was like the Good, the Bad and the Ugly - and there was more ugly this session as far as just pure politics that harmed really good government from going to work," Christian said.

Loss of development

Christian said "the bad" of the session occurred when this district lost a 300-million biomass plant that used hog wood to generate electricity.

"It was the largest economic investment in our East Texas area," Christian said.

One plant would be located in the Nacogdoches area while, according to Christian, another group from Colorado was looking at Jasper County for a thermowater generation plant.

"It was literally up to one billion dollars in economic development to East Texas potentially in bio-mass but Temple-Inland lobbyist that didn't want any incentive dollars being used," Christian said.

One incentive in the bill was that the state of Texas would guarantee that the first energy bought would be the electricity bought from this plant at a higher price for a certain period, according to Christian.

"What would result is that it would be higher price for their electricity for the first four, five years but after that it would come down and save the consumer more than one billion in electric costs," Christian said. "Over time, it would decrease the cost of electricity."

But Temple-Inland opposed the proposition and used their lobbyists to work against the passing of the measure.

"I just call it corporate greed because they wanted no competition for their wood products in our area," Christian said. "I think it is a sad state that a company like Temple-Inland, which is now not an East Texas company and sold off 1/3 of their operation in East Texas, used their power to kill economic development in East Texas."

Christian said that Temple-Inland officials were saying the state was handing out a "free government handout."

"They said it wasn't right for this company to benefit from incentives as if Temple-Inland had not benefited from public roads and government incentives over the years," Christian said. "They believed also that this production would harm the timber industry."

According to Christian, there are more than 300 million tons of hog wood being produced a year in this district.

"You are talking about jobs and reactivating the log industry," Christian said.

Temple-Inland representatives did not return a call for comments on the issue but in a letter published in The Lufkin Daily News, Tony Bennett, vice president of government affairs for Temple-Inland, said the company was concerned with Christian's legislation, saying it sought to subsidize private "for profit" biomass projects, while endangering existing forest products manufacturing jobs - pointing out subsidies, not the power plant, that concerned the forest products industry.

Christian said he has not given up on the bill. In fact, he was to appear in front of the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) this week in an effort to resurrect this bill.

"This bill had 141 votes to nothing twice out of the House and the PUC has the power to pass this bill," Christian said.

On Monday, July 23, a representative of Christian's office said the PUC denied Christian's request on the bill.

Jobs, marriage vital

Christian said during his 12 years in office, he has spent the majority of his time trying to create jobs for his district.

"There are specific needs that the people out here need," Christian said. "But another problem is that 60 percent of our kids in public schools don't have a mom and dad.

"For 40 years we have proven that just by generating a government check to supplement income, while there are some legitimate needs, it has addicted four generations of people to not achieve what is best," Christian said. "And the best thing we can do for folks is get them a job and the best way government can do that is by better education."

Christian said the statistic that puzzles him is an 18- year-old woman, with a child and not married without a high school diploma is "94 percent likely to be on government assistance and their child involved in the criminal justice system.

"The same girl that is married and has a high school diploma is six percent likely to be on government assistance," Christian said. "That is the difference that marriage makes in our society."

He said state and federal government has made it easier for couples to achieve government help.

"The reason people can't get married is that we tell them if they are married we can't provide daycare, we are not going to provide a government check for that kid each month, but you don't get married we will provide you free daycare and a government check each month," Christian said. "We have incentivized the single parent."

Immigration

Christian blamed a Hispanic caucus from keeping a strong immigration legislation from passing through the session.

"They based their opposition to it on a racial motive," Christian said.

He said this Hispanic caucus, which is made up of 30 young members of the Legislature, was against the term "illegal alien."

"They said illegal alien was the n-word," Christian said. "They made a political, racial issue out of any immigration law."

Including that was a bill that Christian supported which would require people to provide picture identification before voting.

"Most papers around the state were against this bill," Christian said. "But we did a poll of Hispanic-American citizens and 85 percent of them were for it because voters want to protect their right to vote.

"The number one issue in the state is people wanting immigration reform and to protect our borders and we couldn't address it," Christian said.

Financing the schools

Christian believes the Legislature did a "good job" dealing with school finance during this session.

"We fund to public schools and the local school boards fund the teachers and determine what they do with the money," Christian said. "So it's a local control issue to a larger extent.

"Teachers are not employees of the state, they work for the local school districts," Christian said. "The state provides for local education but we send it to the school boards and then send it out. But there is never enough for everybody."

Christian said he understand the plight local districts are having in recruiting qualified teachers into this region.

"I have never voted against teacher' raise or incentives," Christian said. "We wanted to start a new incentive plan this year so the local school board could decide if this teacher did a better job than this one and pay them extra money."

This plan fell by the wayside when the Texas State Teachers Association objected to the incentive plan, according to Christian.

"They wanted a total equal system," Christian said. "There are a lot of us in the Legislature, me included, that believe that something is wrong when the best teacher in the state that works hard gets the same pay and benefits as the worst, laziest teacher in the state."

Christian believes a bigger problem for school districts is that the "administrators are not trusted by the teachers."

"It's hard for the Legislature to sit in the middle of the teachers that don't trust the administrators and the administrators that don't communicate well with the teachers," Christian said.

Lake levels

Christian termed it as "fun" in dealing with electrical companies and the lake levels in the area.

"Thirty years ago they did a 50-year contract that the first thing they had to do on Toledo Bend is generate electricity and once that it is met then we can turn to economic development or sporting," Christian said. "All we have been doing for decades is furnishing lowcost electricity to the people down in The Woodlands, which is where Entergy sells its electricity."

Christian said no other representatives would get on board with him to curb this problem and thus he turned to a friend, Phil King, who is chairman of the Regulated Industries Committee.

"I told him that if Entergy wants anything out of this session then they have to hear about our problem with the lake level on Toledo Bend first," Christian said. "I got a call from the Entergy attorney the next day and then we were able to reach the agreement on Toledo Bend."

Lessons learned?

Re-districting will rear its ugly head once again two sessions from now.

"During this session, the Democrats would not allow this rule that allows us to take up action the second day of the session - they didn't allow it to pass," Christian said. "Because of partisan politics, we were delayed for 60 days from doing any business.

"The Democratic party didn't want the Legislature to look good so they could say at election time 'look at the sorry job the Republicans did'," Christian said. "Then we had a fight over the Speaker of the House's seat."

Tom Craddick held the position and had to battle fellow Republicans for the seat.

"The man had done nothing illegal or immoral and there was no reason in the middle of the session to elect another speaker," Christian said. "Tom in my book is a hero for taking the heat for holding the position."